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Hillary Clinton, the Drug War and Drug Treatment

By Ethan Brown

Kudos to Hillary Clinton for acknowledging that "our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade."

That's exactly right and it's way past time for the U.S. to make a serious effort to curb that demand instead of spending billions on incarcerating drug offenders.

Pew's recent study--"One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections"--provides a vivid picture of just how little we do to curb demand for drugs. [More...]

For example: in Kansas, the prison population has surged by more than 50 percent over the past eight years to more than 22,000 inmates yet the state has a mere 400 slots in treatment programs.

Hillary's statement yesterday was a big step forward in recognizing the role of demand in the drug business. But we need to radically reshape our drug policy to focus on curbing the very demand that causes so much violence both here in the U.S and in Mexico.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 26, 2009 (boomark / email).